Havoc by Shannon McKenna

Hellion - Chapter 1

Demi didn’t need to turn around from the frozen yogurt machine to know that Eric had made his grand entrance. The muffled squeals and excited whispering from the other girls behind the Bakery Café’s counter gave it away. Lame-brains. They’d been teasing her about that guy for weeks. Ever since he started coming in here for lunch.

Yes, folks, Eric Trask had entered the building.

Even if she didn’t look around, the effect on her was the same. The ambient temperature shot up ten degrees, whoosh. The earth shifted on its axis, ka-chunk.

Crap. Blushing again. Rosy red right down to the edge of her tee-shirt. Her damn cleavage was blushing.

Stop this bullshit. He’s a cute guy. Eye candy. Not earth-shattering.

The frozen yogurt overflowed the cup and glopped out onto her hand.

Demi cleaned up the mess and sidled over to the crushed Oreos and colored sprinkles without turning around. She was playing it cool. She had no idea he was there. Who? She didn’t even notice him. Why should she? She was working. Busy, busy Demi. Working toward her goals. She couldn’t be bothered with this nonsense. She had no time to waste with—ouch.

She’d smacked her hip on the corner of the ice-cream toppings table.

Eric Trask loomed in her peripheral vision as she deposited the frozen yogurt on the tray full of sandwiches. She made change and smiling chit-chat, having no idea what she was saying. Executive function in her brain was totally AWOL.

He hung back from the counter, ostensibly studying the sandwich board while he waited until she was free to wait on him. Kaia and Tammi leaned over the counter, their boobs practically spilling out of their shirts in their eagerness to take his order.

“Can I help you?” Tammi sang out.

“Still thinking, thanks,” he replied, eyes fixed on the menu.

Ahhhh.His deep voice was scratchy and rough. More smothered giggling from Tammi and Kaia. Grow the fuck up, ladies.

Demi finally allowed herself to look. She had to work up to it slowly, the experience being a full frontal assault on her senses.

He was ridiculously tall, to start with. At least six-three. Broad, too, but lean and tapered. He looked dusty and hot, his tee-shirt stretching deliciously tight over the defined muscle bulges. She loved the way his sleeves strained over the swell of his biceps. She wanted to run her fingers over every contour. Nature’s ultimate sculpture.

Hoo boy. It was a struggle to keep her mouth firmly closed.

His dark blond hair had sported a jarhead buzz-cut before, as befitted a Marine recently back from his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, but it was starting to get a little shaggy on top. His face still had that deep, weathered desert tan. His eyes were a piercing pale gray against his sun-browned skin, like glints of shining chrome. The eye-crinkles around them made him look older than his twenty-four years. Two years older than her.

His eyes had always made him look older. She’d noticed it back in high school, from the first moment she laid eyes on him. He’d been sixteen, she’d been fourteen. He hadn’t noticed her. He’d seen too many things he was desperate to forget. The GodsAcre story was blood-chilling, and people never got tired of chewing over it.

That sadness in his eyes had given her a hot, shaky feeling even then. It had made something inside her chest become soft, achy. Made something melt that should have stayed solid.

She wasn’t the only one melting for the Trask boys. With their muscular good looks, daydreaming about them became a widespread recreational pastime for all the girls at Shaw’s Crossing High School, in spite of the stories about the crazy mountain cult where they grew up. According to the gossip, GodsAcre had been a hotbed of drugs, brain-washing, sex orgies, Satanism. It was even whispered that the Trask brothers were psycho killers trained by Delta Force soldier Jeremiah Paley, GodsAcre’s leader, also known as ‘The Prophet.’ That the three brothers had set the fire that had destroyed GodsAcre themselves.

So. There were possible mass murderers, sitting right there with the rest of them, taking notes in AP Chemistry or Spanish or English class just like normal teenagers.

Normal aside from the fact that they were considerably hotter, that is.

Her granddad had been horrified when his old Marine buddy and longtime friend, Police Chief Otis Trask, had announced his intention of taking in the GodsAcre boys. They needed a home, Otis had argued. They needed to stay together. It was dangerous to leave them to themselves, and Otis didn’t see anyone else stepping up.

Bad idea. Everyone said so. Those boys belonged in a reformatory. Granddad had tried so hard to dissuade Otis, anyone listening would have thought the three boys were fire-breathing demons from hell. Demi remembered him ranting about how damaged and maladapted they must be. How irresponsible it was for the school to let them mix with normal kids after their bizarre upbringing. How it was begging for disaster.

But Otis held firm. The boys moved in with him, and enrolled in the high school.

Crazy rumors hadn’t stopped her from staring at Eric whenever she got the chance. His cheekbones, his broad shoulders, his strong jaw, his sensual lips. He was even handsomer now than he had been back in high school. Bigger, taller, thicker, harder.

His gorgeous smile had become a grin. His teeth were so white. Deep smile grooves cut into his lean cheeks. Like dimples, but longer.

“…everything okay?” He sounded like he was repeating himself. She could feel the heat coming off his body. Damn. That mind-wiping storm wind of testosterone was putting her into a fugue state. She forced herself to breathe. Air helped.

“Ah…ah, yes. Of course. I’m fine.” She smiled back at him. “What’ll it be?” She hoped that she hadn’t already asked him that. Perhaps even gotten an answer.

That grin widened. “Surprise me.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Yeah.”

She looked down her nose at him. A neat trick, at five-foot-four. It took lots of attitude, tiptoes, and hiking her chin way up high. “Game on.”

Kaia sidled past Demi as she grabbed a couple of slices of rye bread and headed to the sandwich bar. “Surprise me?” she said under her breath. “I’d surprise that guy right out of his clothes. Any time, any place.”

“Make that sandwich really tall, girl,” Tammi cooed as she swept by with a drinks order. “And don’t skimp the sauce. You want it really juicy, so that that thick wad of hot, salty meat can slip right down, you know what I’m talking about?”

“Shut…up!” Demi whispered savagely.

“What do you think, Kai?” Tammi said to Kaia. “Mayo? Or herb vinaigrette?”

“Oh, ranch, for sure. Long, strong squirts of it.”

“Piss off, both of you,” Demi snapped. “I’m busy.”

“I just bet you are, you lucky girl.”

Demi blocked them out of her consciousness by concentrating on making the sandwich for the ages. One worthy of fueling a body that gorgeous. Rye bread, grilled in herbed dill butter, piled with pepper rolled roast beef and thick slabs of melted pepper-jack cheese. A few draped pieces roasted red pepper, juicy slices of crimson heirloom tomatoes, some tender green Bibb lettuce. A towering stack of home fried potatoes and a scoop of her own specially tweaked coleslaw. A bottle of an herbal tea and fruit infusion.

“Don’t forget the pickle, girlfriend,” Tammi sang out. “A nice, fat one.”

Demi gave her the finger over her shoulder as she bopped the swinging door open with her hip and carried out the tray with her creation on it. Not blushing this time, oh no. She’d been slaving over a hot griddle. She got that tomato-red color from honest toil and no one could say she hadn’t.

She laid the sandwich down in front of him. “Here you go. A Demi Vaughan special. Billed by the till as a roast beef and cheese, but I tarted it up for you. And a green tea, lime and goji berry cocktail to wash it down. It’ll balance your heart chakra, flood you with antioxidants and replace lost electrolytes.”

His silver-chrome eyes flicked up and down her body. “Looks incredible.” His deep, throaty rasp brushed tenderly on every nerve. “Thanks for keeping it special. My heart chakra is getting all excited just from looking at it.”

She smiled, fishing for something cute and witty to say. Came up blank.

He started again. “Hey, I just wanted to ask you—”

“Demi!” Raelene, her boss, hollered from kitchen, cutting off his words. “Demi, get back here for a second!”

“Be right there.” She backed awkwardly away before she realized what she was doing and turned around to walk away with some dignity. Like a normal human being.

In the kitchen, Raelene, a skinny lady with a graying crown of braids, handed her a clipboard. “I want you to do some inventory in the storeroom,” she announced.

“Inventory?” Demi glanced back toward Eric before she could stop herself.

Raelene caught the look. “Tammi or Kaia can ring him up. You’ll need to do boring crap busywork when you’re running your own business, you know. Get used to it.”

“Of course, but during the lunch rush?”

“I’ll help the other girls up front if they need it. And I know it’s not my business, but that boy is a dead end. Don’t conduct your flirtations on my clock, Demi.”

Demi bristled. “I’m not! I have never wasted time on the job.”

Raelene’s mouth tightened. “Stay away from him. He’s bad luck. Bad news.”

“It’s nobody’s business, and I don’t see why you would even—”

“The Prophet’s Curse got my brother. Did you know that?”

Demi stared at the older woman, appalled. “Raelene. Please. You don’t mean you actually believe those old rumors? That’s just a vicious, crazy story. An urban myth.”

Raelene shrugged. “Fourteen people dead in twelve days,” she said. “And it happened right after Darryl refused to give Jeremiah another building permit for his compound. The old bastard wanted to build right in the middle of an elk run. Darryl said no. And the next day, he was dead. Is that an urban myth, you think?”

“Natural causes,” Demi said.

“Right,” Raelene said. “Like all the rest of the people the Prophet was pissed with. That’s a whole lot of natural causes crowded together in a very small time frame. A very small geographical area. Too small.”

“But…you think Darryl was poisoned?” Demi said hesitantly. “Or are you saying that it’s an actual curse? Like, black magic, or something? You’re not serious.”

She studied the other woman’s face. The realization dawned slowly, with a sickening chill.

Raelene was dead serious.

“Raelene,” Demi said. “Even if Darryl really was murdered somehow, and even if it actually was Jeremiah’s fault, he’s dead and gone. It wasn’t Eric or his brothers who caused any of that stuff to happen. They were only kids at the time. It can’t be their fault.”

“I didn’t say it was their fault,” Raelene said stiffly. “I don’t understand what happened back then, but it was sick and bad, and I don’t like to see a nice young lady getting mixed up with it. Neither would your mother, as I’m sure you know.”

Demi felt her back prickle. “He’s not a criminal, Raelene. He’s a veteran, he works, he’s not in any kind of trouble, so I don’t understand why you—”

“We’re not having this conversation on my dime. Get to work if you still want this job. If you don’t, you know where the door is.”

Raelene marched out of the kitchen, rubber-soled trainers squeaking aggressively.

Demi was speechless. Her first instinct was to walk out. Screw this crap. Raelene had no right to preach or pass judgment about Demi’s private life and personal choices.

But she couldn’t afford to throw a tantrum. Her parents were already angry and disappointed with her. They’d been angry ever since she changed her major to restaurant management, rather than business administration, and they got even angrier when she refused the internship at the Shaw Paper Products distribution center in Tacoma. Or at any of the other SPP centers scattered over the western US, for that matter.

Dad had used his most sneering tone. The little princess is too good for the family business? You’d rather wait tables and carry catering trays than take a shot at a grown-up job? A sandwich shop is your goddamn life’s ambition now?

She’d hoped for a summer job in her field for those last few weeks before her internship in Seattle started. The internship was a hard-won prize, and she could hardly wait to start. Eight weeks working closely with famed chef Maurizio Altamura at the renowned restaurant Peccati di Gola. In the meantime, she wasn’t too proud to sling hash at the Bakery Café in Shaw’s Crossing. It was food prep, and therefore relevant to her future plans. Somewhat. And this way, she could save on rent for a few more weeks.

But her parents, and Granddad, had been horrified. So she couldn’t bail on the Bakery Café the first time she got huffy with the boss. Not in her shaky position.

Demi resisted the urge to peek and see if Eric was still there. She couldn’t let him see her do that. It would look desperate and fawning and childish.

Besides, he was probably back at work. Maybe drinking what was left of his green tea and goji berry cocktail. Maybe holding the cool, sweaty bottle up against his hot face. Putting it to his lush, sensual lips, throat working as he drank. Until a single drop of condensation from the bottle trickled slowly…sexily…down his strong, tanned throat.

Whew. One would think that the dull task of counting cans and bottles in a pantry would chill an overheated girl right down.

Think again.